Herbert Bauer (police officer)

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At the corner of Edelhofdamm and Oranienburger Chaussee, the Frohnau Wall Memorial reminds of Herbert Bauer

Herbert Bauer (born November 30, 1925 , † December 25, 1952 in Berlin ) was a German police officer in West Berlin . In an incident while serving on the Berlin border, Bauer was shot dead by an unknown member of the Soviet Army .

Life

Herbert Bauer was a trained machine fitter . During the Second World War he was one of the machine personnel of a submarine on the front lines. On May 24, 1946, Bauer joined the Berlin police . In the division of Berlin, he joined the police on the Berlin municipal authorities used police chief Johannes silent on who took his seat in West Berlin.

Fatal border incident

According to the crime scene sketch in Edelhofdamm, the two radio patrol cars stopped right and left at the level of the park pavilion. 20 minutes later, five carbines took up position here.
Memorial stone in the Joseph Brix – Felix Genzmer – Park, in Berlin-Frohnau

In December 1952 Bauer did in the police station Reinickendorf service as a patrol leader with the rank of police top sergeant at the police station 298 on Ludolfinger Place 4. The duties of the district included the surveillance of the external border of the three sides of the DDR surrounded West Berlin district of Frohnau .

The following events could only be reconstructed through testimony before the West Berlin police and based on the recordings of the radio operations center (Fubz) of the West Berlin police.

The kidnapping attempt

The F. couple from Bad Orb stayed with their daughter at Oranienburger Chaussee 68 in Berlin-Frohnau for Christmas 1952 . This corner property was bounded by Oranienburger Chaussee to the west, although the entrance was still in the French sector , and to the south by Leipziger Strasse, an extension of the Frohnauer Edelhofdamm to the GDR community Glienicke / Nordbahn . Across Oranienburger Chaussee and at the end of Edelhofdamm, barriers for vehicles and pedestrians marked the Berlin border.

At around 3:30 a.m. on December 25, 1952, the couple returned to their home with their daughter after attending midnight mass and being with other family members. Upon entering the property, three Soviet soldiers who had come over to the French sector from the corner of Leipziger Strasse and Oranienburger Chaussee asked the family, after a short exchange of words, to follow them across the border. With PPSch-41 type submachine guns (MPi) in front of them, pushing and pushing, they drove the family about 100 meters along Oranienburger Chaussee, which belonged to the GDR, until Ms. F. simulated a painful heart attack by shouting and gasping for breath to the ground went. The soldiers allowed F. and his daughter to bring the woman, who was believed to be in mortal danger, back to house number 68. When the front door was opened, the F. family managed to escape into the house after a scuffle with one of the two soldiers who had re-entered the French sector. After that, the soldiers stayed on the property and tried in vain to break into the house. Due to the noise that Ms. F. in particular had caused, a property resident and a tenant of the house had become aware of what was happening and had alerted the police by telephone.

Bauer's commitment

The first emergency call reached Fubz on December 25, 1952 at 4:05 a.m. It came from a resident of the property Oranienburger Chaussee 68, according to which "Russians were on their property and wanted to abduct civilians calling for help". Thereupon the Fubz sent the radio patrol cars D 18 ("Dora 18") and D 12 with three or two men to the corner of Edelhofdamm / Oranienburger Chaussee. The police were armed with 7,65 mm Mauser pistols, each with eight rounds.

Bauer's car D 18 stopped at 4:09 a.m. in the right lane of the park-like wide Edelhofdamm, the D 12 arriving a little later on the left. When D18 arrived, there was silence. The Soviet soldiers were on the sidewalk in front of the property about ten meters deep in the French sector, but could not be seen in the dark. When Bauer crossed Oranienburger Chaussee to property 68 with his flashlight switched on, one of two Soviet soldiers emerging from behind a tree in front of the property fired his MPi at Bauer. Bauer fell over and shouted loudly for help. Bauer's colleague S., who followed him five meters away with his pistol drawn, then fired his magazine at the two soldiers. A soldier he might have hit ran into Leipziger Strasse. When S. tried to get to Bauer, the Soviet soldier fired shots on the pavement between S. and Bauer.

Failed rescue

A member of D 12 had seen the shots at Bauer, recognized the riflemen and took up position at the end of the Edelhofdamm. From there he gave S. fire protection when he tried again to rescue Bauer until his magazine was emptied. Although one policeman arrived by bike and one on foot in the following minutes, and at 4.16 a.m. the five-man group patrol D 21 arrived to reinforce one another, the police officers who were now protecting each other from fire did not succeed in the face of the soldiers who repeatedly fired their MPi, the farmer who was calling ever more quietly to recover. In the meantime, several members of the German Border Police (DGP) had arrived on the GDR side , who, according to their statements, had been instructed to arrange with the West Berlin police that the Soviet soldiers should return from West Berlin. The soldier they spoke to rejected their attempts to mediate with the request to disappear, otherwise he would shoot them. The border police then withdrew.

When the Reinickendorf Task Force drove up Edelhofdamm at 4:30 a.m., the Soviet soldier left the French sector while firing in the direction of the engine noise and disappeared into Leipziger Strasse. There was at least one other soldier who fired a shot at the incoming task force with his MPi, but then also withdrew.

The task force consisted of ten police officers, five of whom were equipped with the 98k carbine , and another ten in reserve who remained about 100 meters from the border. At 4.35 a.m., the five carbine riflemen positioned at the pavilion in Edelhofdamm enabled a five-man rescue squad to leave cover by firing in the direction of the Soviet soldiers who might still be present in order to transport the farmer, who had meanwhile fallen silent. He was taken to the Dominikus Hospital in Berlin-Hermsdorf , where his death was determined. Bauer was fatally injured in the abdomen by four bullets that had been hit in the back. He left behind his wife and two preschool sons.

consequences

Investigations

The detective Commissariat of Police Inspectorate Reinickendorf the West Berlin police heard on 25 and 27 December a total of 19 witnesses, including three members of the family F., three residents and 13 police officers. A public prosecutor's investigation does not exist because German authorities were not allowed to take legal action against the occupying powers . There are no crime scene photos and the results of a forensic investigation in the tradition .

Also on December 25, the French gendarmerie began to question witnesses. In the afternoon, the commander of the French Sector of Berlin, General Pierre Carolet, publicly protested to the representative of the Soviet Control Commission in Berlin, General Sergei Dengin, against the "repulsive murder ... on Christmas night", which "the whole world condemned", and demanded the heaviest penalties for them Guilty party. Dengin replied on the same day with a description that West Berlin police officers tried under intense fire to surround Soviet soldiers in order to take them to West Berlin territory. It was a carefully prepared “provocative action” that failed “only thanks to the bravery and cold bloodedness” of the Soviet soldiers.

From December 30th, the gendarmerie hermetically sealed off the crime area and a joint Franco-Soviet commission began an investigation in camera. The available literature does not contain any information on the result. There is also no information on the very unusual appearance of a Soviet patrol at this point, their assignment, the number and association membership of those involved. There is also a lack of more detailed information on the use of DGP members.

West Berlin public

The incident aroused the Berlin public to a great extent. For West Berliners, 1952 was marked by a drastic deterioration on the part of the GDR, such as the shutdown of East-West telephone traffic in May and the extensive closure of the external border in June, which not only allowed visits to relatives but also access to thousands jobs , holiday properties, retirement homes and the largest Berlin cemetery outside the city limits were almost impossible. There were also kidnappings of West Berliners, among whom Walter Linses had aroused particular disgust. The circumstances of Bauer's death at Christmas time, such as his 30-minute bleeding to death and the helplessness of dozens of police officers, increased the indignation against the Soviet occupation forces. During the Christmas holidays, thousands of Berliners made a pilgrimage to the crime scene to lay flowers. Politicians, the press and representatives of the police called for better arming of the police officers deployed at the borders.

Senate and House arranged national mourning for Herbert Bauer on December 30, 1952, demanding the farms on to their employees on leave, authorities closed at 14.00. Around 100,000 people took part in the mourning rally in front of Schöneberg Town Hall . The governing mayor Ernst Reuter gave a speech in which he said: “We never want to bow to this system ... We also call on the powers that are protecting us. We no longer want to tolerate Berliners being kidnapped and shot down. The world must understand that this is our right ... ”The journey of the hearse to the“ Am Nordgraben ”cemetery in Berlin-Tegel on December 30th was lined with hundreds of thousands of mourners. The police counted a total of 800,000 to 900,000 participants in the celebrations. The organization and course of the solemn funeral were reminiscent of the celebrations that had taken place in East Berlin in October 1948 in honor of the first People's Policeman, Fritz Maque, who was killed while on duty at the sector border .

On the evening of the day of mourning, unknown perpetrators shot dead the people's police officer Helmut Just in East Berlin right on the border with the French sector . The motive for the murder of Just remained unclear, but an act of revenge by East or West Berliners for the murder of Bauer could not be ruled out.

Depiction in the SED propaganda

The East Berlin press, controlled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), immediately took over the version of the offense of the Soviet occupying power and initially withheld Bauer's death and later his name. From then on, it found itself in an enhanced and embellished form in depictions of the history of West Berlin. The Marxist-Leninist historiography of the GDR presented the incident, always without evidence, as a “serious attack by the silent police”. According to this, a Soviet military patrol was attacked by 40 silent police officers coming from the French sector, with “a West Berlin policeman being the victim of his own Provocation [became] ”. Accordingly, the “rampant pogrom incitement” that began in West Berlin was considered to be the cause of the murder of Just by two West Berlin terrorists. An echo of this representation is a 1995, with countless errors and unaccounted contribution in the anthology Tod in Berlin .

Herbert Bauer's grave of honor at Tegel cemetery, August 2016

Honors

Herbert Bauer received an honorary grave from the State of Berlin . It is located in the Tegel cemetery in Dept. 7 R. 1-5. The gravestone bears the inscription "Police Oberwachtmeister Herbert Bauer died for freedom." A memorial stone in the Josef Brix - Felix Genzmer - Park on Edelhofdamm in the form of a stylized grave cross bears the same inscription. Bauer's name is recorded in the police memorial book in Berlin's police headquarters. Since July 27, 1991, on the corner of Edelhofdamm and Oranienburger Chaussee, a memorial in memory of the victims of the Berlin Wall in the form of a segment of the Berlin Wall with a wooden cross in front of them has been dedicated to those killed at this point. The names Herbert Bauer and Michael Bittner are recorded on a small plaque on the cross.

literature

  • Michael Stricker: Last deployment. Police officers killed on duty in Berlin from 1918 to 2010 , Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft, Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 3-86676-141-4 , (= series of publications by the German Society for Police History, Volume 11), pp. 346–384.
  • Gerhard Salter, Johanna Dietrich, Fabian Kuhn: Oberwachtmeister Herbert Bauer . In: dies .: The forgotten dead. Fatalities of the GDR border regime in Berlin from division to the building of the Wall (1948–1961) . Ch. Links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-933-9 , pp. 232-237.

Web links

Commons : Herbert Bauer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the boundary, see the coordinates given above Coordinates: 52 ° 38 ′ 15 ″  N , 13 ° 18 ′ 22 ″  E
  2. ^ Reproduced in indirect speech in Stricker (Lit.), p. 353
  3. ↑ See crime scene sketch in Stricker (Lit.), p. 354
  4. ↑ cit., E.g. Partly indirectly, with Hans J. Reichhardt , Joachim Drogmann and Hanns U. Treutler (arr.): Berlin. Chronicle of the years 1951–1954 . Heinz Spitzing, Berlin 1968, p. 603 f.
  5. ^ Hans J. Reichhardt , Joachim Drogmann and Hanns U. Treutler (arrangement): Berlin. Chronicle of the years 1951–1954 . Heinz Spitzing, Berlin 1968, p. 606.
  6. ↑ Quotation from Wolfgang Paul : Kampf um Berlin . Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart, Hamburg 1962, p. 223.
  7. ↑ On the funeral services, see Michael Stricker: Last use. Police officers killed on duty in Berlin from 1918 to 2010 , Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft, Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 3-86676-141-4 , (= series of publications by the German Society for Police History, Volume 11), pp. 361–377.
  8. ↑ Gerhard Sälter: The Soviet blockade and the border regime in Berlin. From contemporary media discourses to collective memory of the Cold War . In: Corine Defrance , Bettina Greiner , Ulrich Pfeil (eds.): The Berlin Airlift. Cold War memorial site . Links, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86153-991-9 , p. 163.
  9. ^ So Gerhard Keiderling in: Ders. u. Percy Stulz : Berlin 1945–1968. On the history of the capital of the GDR and the independent political unit West Berlin . Dietz, Berlin 1970, p. 308 f.
  10. ↑ Peter Niggl, Hari Winz: Shooting for the peace festival. Sergeant Herbert Bauer becomes a fallen hero . In. This: death in Berlin. Criminal cases from the metropolis . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2001², ISBN 978-3-360-00789-6 , pp. 55-64
  11. ↑ The information and images from Pharus-Plan with incorrect information about the incident
  12. ↑ Information on the Frohnau Wall Memorial at commemorative panels-in-berlin.de
personal data
SURNAME Bauer, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German policeman who was shot at the sector border
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1925
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1952
Place of death Berlin